Understanding that it isn’t customer service – it’s human service

Understanding that the people you work with and for are real people with real problems of their own helps you think about your job in a totally different way more satisfying way.

I started my company, Humanist Learning Systems, to help people by sharing my knowledge and the knowledge of others with them.  The thing about sharing knowledge though, is it’s a pretty lonely business.  People read your book, or they take a course and very rarely do you get feedback about whether they thought it was helpful or not.

But every once in a while I hear from a customer. Maybe someone takes the time to post a review online, or they contact me directly because they have a question they need answered, or – they have a problem they are hoping I can help them with.

When someone actually takes the time to call me and ask me a question – I am thrilled. I don’t view these conversations as a hassle. I view them as the reason I went into business in the first place. It’s another opportunity for me to help a fellow human being and it’s satisfying because – it’s real.

It’s nice when my customers recognize that my company is not some faceless bureaucracy, but it is staffed by a real live person, me.  

We all play multiple roles in our lives. Sometimes we are the ones providing customer service and at other times we are asking for customer service. Regardless of the role I play, I try to remember that the other person is a human just like me.

I find that when I treat my customers and my customer service reps as real people, not just people who exist to serve my needs, I not only feel better. I feel more human. And that feels really good.

Derek Sivers – founder of CD Baby has a really great article on customer service (http://sivers.org/cs) where he talks about how putting the customer first and allowing them to win every fight with you is not just good customer service, it’s good for you. He says, “the act of doing this every day is very peaceful. It feels like daily empathy practice.”

Being human with your customers and with those who provide you with customer service are a way to not only make a human connection, it’s a way to practice being the best version of yourself. And it feels good. So why not make work and your interpersonal interactions fun. Why treat what should be an opportunity to connect with your fellow humans as work?

Be nice, be yourself, be human and recognize that those you interact with are human too and show a genuine interest in them.  You may not be able to solve all your problems or theirs, but you will help make things a little bit better and that’s at least something.

Connectomes and Humanism

What does it mean to be human?

There is a wonderful Ted talk by Sebastian Seung who is a neuroscientist. His talk is about connectomes. A connectome is the total set of connections your brain’s neurons have with each other. It’s basically a map of how your brain talks to itself.

The theory is that your neural connections impact your memory and your emotions and it’s where all your thinking and experiences are processed. You are your connectome. Here is the video of his talk video.

I think he makes a very good case for us being our connectome. But how does this impact what it means to be human and how we see ourselves as Human.

For a Humanist, I don’t think it impacts much. Most of us are already aware that we are a big bag of chemicals and gooshy matter already and that there is a good possibility that consciousness is an artifice of how our brains function, calling into question just how much we are “consciously” in control of our behavior. This impacts the concept of free will directly.

This matters because Humanism, as a philosophy, is dependent on the existence of free will. No free will, no personal responsibility. No personal responsibility, no one needs to even try to be moral.

And yet, the experience of consciousness is pretty darned compelling and it certainly seems as if we have free will. And most of us can override our instincts well enough to behave morally when it really matters or when we really make an effort.

The important point for us humans who are trying to be good moral people is that our connectome is both genetically created and changeable. It is both a product of nature and of nurture.  In other words, we are capable of learning.

And this is great news for those of us striving to be better people. Through practice, we can learn and create new ways of thinking and being through changes to our connectome. It isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen automatically, but repetition strengthens the connections that lead to behavior and thus, the more we practice being good, the easier being good becomes.

Yes, you are your connectome. Your job is to use your brain’s connectome effectively.